JERRY: What were you doing?
GEORGE: Well, it’s not my fault. You poked me!
JERRY: You’re supposed to just take a peek after a poke. You were like you just put a quarter into one of those big metal things on top of the Empire State Building.
GEORGE: It’s cleavage. I couldn’t look away. What am I, waiting to win an Oscar here? This is all I have in my life.
JERRY: Looking at cleavage is like looking at the sun, you don’t stare at it. It’s too risky. You get a sense of it and then you look away.
That’s what SHE said!
I’m glad you brought this up. I tried to think of a male equivalent and couldn’t exactly. What are a man’s secondary sexual characteristics that might be displayed inappropriately? Is it a great physique and too-tight clothes? Maybe. I would probably think too-tight clothes were not appropriate office attire but I don’t know if I would find them distracting. How would I feel if I saw a woman in a burqa? Nothing in particular. I’d hope I could see her face just because we were talking and that’s what I’m used to.
I don’t argue with anyone who says this is all on me and I need to just get over it. I just wanted to see what the community thinks about this issue these days.
I also don’t argue, at least not very strongly, with the slippery-slope argument, from office-appropriate to a burqa. A number of years ago where I worked there was a cute young salesperson who habitually dressed pretty provocatively. The bosses told her to tone it down, not because it was distracting to the rest of the staff, but because it was sending the wrong message to the customers. I wonder how that would be handled today.
There’s also a generational element. Standards for what’s considered provocative change over time. In Renaissance-era Europe, cleavage wasn’t considered as provocative as showing bare legs. Shakespeare would have thought that a 2018 professionally-dressed female executive was a prostitute.
As a man nearing 60, I have to admit that what’s acceptable today is somewhat different than when I was younger. E.g., cleavage seems to be more accepted today. I have encountered some attention-grabbing outfits on younger colleagues.
But it’s up to us oldsters to accept this, and treat colleagues professionally. The world doesn’t deal with you; you deal with the world.
PS: I recently had an eye exam from an attractive young opthamologist who was displaying some cleavage. She had me dilate my eyes to examine my retina in that machine where the doctor and patient sit face to face, while she directed me to ‘look up’, ‘look right’, etc.
When it was time to ‘look down’, I reflected on how much effort I’d been putting into *not *looking down. And hoped that looking down wouldn’t temporarily render it difficult to stand up.
Does that explain your username?
My Scottish client had “casual Fridays”. Most of the people in IT used that to bring out the souvenir or nerdy tees; the guys from Accenture didn’t wear ties.
And this guy wore an old white tee that had grown so thin you could have counted his very-black on very-white-skin chest hairs. As he was very tall and lean we called him “the long pig”, with our apologies to those lovely animals who turn garbage into ham.
Roderick, were her actions that of someone trying to get attention? Or was she just doing her job? There is a lot of difference here. A lot of people seem very confused by what to wear in “business casual” situations. I see a lot of inappropriate clothing, often because the wearer doesn’t realize how inappropriate they are. I’m working on a company’s HR policies right now and one of the ones being revamped is the dress code. It’s a tough one, as we have areas of the business the public never sees and those who must meet with clients every day. We have the sexy dressers (one wears skintight pleather), the dowdy dressers (no your sweatpants are not appropriate, and neither are leggings if your top doesn’t cover your butt), we have the guys who wear ancient, faded shirts that look like they are ready the rag bag. Most of these people are unaware that their attire is inappropriate.
actually I had a strange experience at an optometrist’s office when I was 16 … she was giving me an eye exam because I had problem moving my eyes up and down occasionally and she didn’t want to do a procedure …
and I tried following the light she had in her hand but couldn’t do it so she says its a muscle cramp and I need to try moving it up and down and as incentive she leaned close loosened her top leaned in front of me and said nonchalantly if you look down you can tell me what colors you see and before I knew it my eyes were moving down …
the colors were her jeweled piercings … she stood up and said I just needed some drops to keep them for cramping up I made an awkward joke and she laughed said there’s a reason some female eye doctors wear loose tops …especially if they work for a state agency that way they can see if your faking for things like workman’s comp or not …
I wonder if the two parts are related?
I thought of this, because the gay manager at an office where I worked (easily the best small-office manager I have ever worked with), got very embarrassed when interviewing a young woman for an office job. He could see the edge of the tattoo, and he was just trying to work out what it said or pictured, when he noticed that the young woman was noticing him looking…I can still remember how red he looked 
I’m straight, and I’m used to not-looking-at-womens-breasts. The way women dress is policed by other women. Nothing to do with me really.
I just checked; yours is the only instance of the word “rape” up to this point in the thread, so I’m going to venture a “no.”
Isn’t there a dichotomy between wearing a revealing top and (apparently) no bra and “My eyes are up here, perv!”?
What women wear in public has always been a source of conflict, misunderstanding, and much much worse. Women are indeed still continually blamed for being raped because they wore clothing that some man understood to be an invitation to sexual violence.
Typical male sexual arousal is, as I understand, far more visual and far more specific (or you could say, fetishistic) than typical female sexual arousal.
That means that when women dress for places where there will be men, they will be dressing in a foreign language. After puberty, girls have to laboriously learn how men react to the way they dress. It is a difficult language to learn for many complicated reasons. It’s almost impossible to dress so that you get the reactions you want and none you don’t want.
Men never, ever, get judged for their clothing the way women do. Not by men or by women. Nor do they get the continual stream of conflicting imperatives that women do:
Be work-appropriate but not mannish.
Be attractive but don’t be sexy.
Be sexy but don’t look like a whore.
What would YOU wear?
The OP example was of someone who didn’t quite hit the right note that day. Maybe all her button-to-the-chin blouses were at the dry cleaners. Maybe she was trying to send a sexual message to a particular person who wasn’t you. Maybe she was coming from a slightly different office culture . . . some women just feel best in clothes like that.
The necklace is the key here; it drew attention to her breasts, indicating she wants men to stare there. As has already been mentioned by others, this is a dual strategy: get men to view her favorably by playing to their instincts; and make men who stare uncomfortable to retain a measure of psychological leverage (i.e., control) over them. It strikes me as manipulative yet common, and no doubt some men will fall over themselves falling for it.
About ten years ago, I taught a class at work, after which I received a complaint from a (male) student that my jeans were too tight. He was probably right. I had recently moved from a research and engineering environment (where nobody cared about appearance) into a more formal office.
I’ll grant you it happens much less often than with women, but don’t say never.
Yes, because we never wear jewelry for ourselves. There aren’t enough eye rolls in the world.
No. Her demeanor was business-like.
This illustrates the gap between actions and intentions. I have no way of knowing what her intentions were. I can only describe what I saw. So Dropo could be correct, but I would be loath to assume so.
The young lady was a great co-worker, did great work but she’d wear next to nothin’ in the office … the men-folk got together about the club-wear being distracting and decided to contact the “What Not to Wear” folks … they jumped all over this and did a whole episode with her … really funny …
“Is that why all the guys talk to me over the partition?”
She just didn’t know … maybe that’s the case here … the woman is just used to the plunging neckline … pretend to ignore it, let her do her job, and enjoy …
Curse those devious harlots with their having breasts for psychological leverage i.e. control!
Or the necklace was a gift and the chain on the necklace is a little too long, but because its a gift from someone she cares about, she wears it anyway. (The number of gift necklaces I have that hit in the wrong place is significantly greater than zero)
I also agree that a short woman - or a woman sitting down while people stand over her - shows a lot more cleavage than when she looks at herself in the mirror straight on. It took a long time to learn that I look in the mirror, and then I look straight down. If looking straight down its inappropriate, it isn’t work appropriate. But it will look perfectly appropriate from straight on.
Her body. She chooses how she wants to dress.
Your body. You choose where you want to point your eyeball(s).
Hardly. I wear necklaces despite my big boobs. I wear them because they dress up what is really a long sleeve t-shirt, making it more acceptably-dressy for my business-casual job. I have never intentionally worn a necklace to draw attention to the boods.
But I admit that it does help distract from the oversize hips.